Up until the early 1980s the British forces (indeed, many other forces) were issued with manually wound watches which ranged from simple, low jewel count disposable watches (viz. some ‘Vietnam Era’ USA issued pieces) to high grade navigational timekeepers such as the IWC Mark XI. Between the two were a plethora of watches which were suited to and served many purposes. Of course, in those days it was necessary for the purchasing authorities to make use of what was within reason available to a certain degree ‘off the shelf’ – manufacturers would need to comply with various standards as laid down by the relevant department (for example fixed lug bars) but in terms of performance then requirements were kept within the bounds of reality given that for many decades the technology available was of course limited to purely mechanical devices as opposed to anything electronic.
From a watch collector’s standpoint, the fact that many types of watch were issued to many branches opens up a wonderful collecting opportunity which has certainly become more popular since the early 1990s and indeed continues to be so; this is reflected in the upward trend in prices for most military timepieces. Depending on where one might focus then it could take years to complete a collection; take for example the type of watch which would have been issued to a serving member of the British armed forces (should he be lucky enough to be issued a watch – though that is another story); if we concentrate on the thirty years from late World War II through to the mid 1970s then we would find brands including Vertex, Cyma, Smiths, Hamilton, Jaeger Le Coultre, IWC, Omega, Timor, Record, Lemania, Eterna, Grana, and Buren. This list is of course not exhaustive and some brands mentioned would not have been issued as General Service watches, there were specialist requirements depending on the branch of service – for example divers’ watches and navigators watches.
The phrase mentioned in the preceding paragraph which is of interest in ‘General Service’. To this day, there continues to be a General Service watch available for issue when necessary and such watches have to a certain degree evolved over the years to take advantage of more modern technology. Again, if we look at the decades post World War II to the early 1980s then perhaps that is the most interesting period in terms of the variety of General Service watch available for building a collection or study. Indeed, the subject of ‘Wrist Watch Waterproof’ and ‘Watch, Wrist, General Service’ would entail an article of not inconsiderable length in itself. Whilst the requirements of the relevant MOD Defence Standard (DEF STAN) were to some degree relatively simple for such watches the number of brands which were contracted to supply were fairly wide ranging as can be seen from the list in the paragraph above. In the case of performance for example, as of 1969 then in terms of accuracy DEF STAN 66-4 (Part 4) required that:
‘…the mean daily rate at the positions specified…is not to exceed plus 20 seconds or minus 10 seconds’
Interestingly, just five months after the issue of the DEF STAN from which this quote originates the first commercially available quartz watch was put on sale by Seiko of Japan with a claimed accuracy of five seconds per month. No doubt perfect for military applications but with a price tag of US$1250 per piece (the price of a Toyota Corolla) – not perfect for the budgetary constraints of a government department responsible for procuring thousands of wristwatches per year.
Thus, despite the increasing commercial availability of quartz engined wristwatches in the 1970s (again, mainly from Japan) the UK MOD soldiered on with manually wound watches for a decade until the quartz revolution had reached the point whereby production costs had fallen to a level such that relatively phenomenal accuracy was available for much, much less than the price of a new car. What did change however during the 1970s was that as far as suppliers were concerned then the number of such reduced to a mere handful when it came to General Service watches. A 1976 manufactured and issued watch therefore might only be marked Hamilton or CWC. In February 1980 DEF STAN 66-4 Part 4 /Issue 4 appeared and contained a word within its title which hitherto hadn’t been seen on such a document:
‘Watch, Wrist, Electronic, General Service’
Furthermore, a related word appeared (and was required) on the dial which had not been seen before on a British military watch – QUARTZ.
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The above illustration depicts with one word how things were changing; the case design shown above was that used in the mid 1970s by CWC and Hamilton for the manually wound General Service watch. As far as I am aware, there were no quartz variants produced using the above case.
With the coming of the 1980 DEF STAN things changed as far as a standard British military watch was concerned; of course there were many thousands of mechanical timepieces in store and indeed issued years afterwards but these would be disposed of in favour of the quartz watch which was required to be (and more often than not was) up to forty times more accurate than previously dictated:
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